|
|
|
|
The banks of a small creek in Oregon's Coast Range Mountains. The water splashes over a jumble of rock and fallen logs in its steep, headlong rush to the river. Rainbow and cutthroat trout lie in ambush in the shelter of its shallow
pools. Deer and elk trails lead to and beside its icy waters.
Occasionally, a glint in the gravel points to the presence of gold. The forest grows right to the edge of the bank here, an ancient forest of cedar and hemlock. None of the trees are less than a hundred years old--some much older--most trunks are more than two feet in diameter, their bark gnarled and deeply scarred. Beneath the canopy, a soft yellow carpet of cast-off needles contrasts with the rich green of the fern, huckleberry, moss, and poison oak that thrive in the perpetual twilight of the forest floor. Now the images begin to tremble and fade as though the giant trees were dissolving. With them go the fern and other undergrowth and in their place appears a low structure of unpainted, rough-hewn cedar planks. A tanned hide serves as the building's door and smoke seeps from a small opening in the roof. A cooking fire burns on the bare ground
before it. "Good." The old man nods more to himself than to the young woman standing beside him. "This is good . A good place."
The young woman peers off into the distant ranks of forest. "I feel
it. It knows we're here."
"No matter," the old man says, "It is not us it is looking
for."
The young woman takes a deep breath. "So now what?"
"We prepare for the battle. And try to alert the other ones."
From Highway 101 as it swung down toward the north bank of the river, the community of Placerton looked as precarious as a newly-founded colony. It clung to a narrow strip of land pinned between the mountains rising to the east, the ocean and river to the west and north, and the layer of mottled cloud overhead. The mountains, though low by western standards, were steep and rugged and darkly ominous. A thick forest of fir, red cedar, and hemlock trapped pockets of mist along
the slopes and seemed to press at the edges of town. Police Chief Dan Connor drove across the Skookum River bridge--an improvement added only sixty years ago, replacing ferry service--and headed into town. He waved as Harry Perkins passed heading north in the Electric Co-op's service truck, climbed the low rise above the Port and its small forest of masts and headed down a quiet Main Street to the Police Station. He parked in the lot behind the municipal building and stepped out of his car into the morning. It was going to rain again. The wind--though light--was warm and from the south and when the wind was from the south, it rained. It was a better forecaster than the Weather Service.Of course, it was January and it had rained all but two days this month already. A half dozen seagulls hovered on the wind overhead, screaming for a handout, then allowed the wind to whisk them off when they didn't get
one. Only one other vehicle was in the lot this early. Stephanie's white Honda Civic. Its engine ticked slowly in the cool morning.
He adjusted his sidearm and walked into the station. `
Stephanie Amis looked up from her desk and smiled. "Morning, Chief.
The coffee's fresh."
"Someday, I swear, I'm going to get here first and make you coffee." Stephanie smiled at the old joke. Both knew she was a morning person while he stayed up to watch the late movie and had to drag himself out of bed in the morning. Today, she looked particularly fresh in a cream-colored sweater and tweed skirt.
"Any calls?"
She shook her head. "Have you heard about the storm?"
"What storm is that?" He hadn't bothered listening to the
weather this morning. "It's supposed to be as big as the Columbus Day Storm," she said. "Maybe bigger. It's still too far out at sea to be sure."
He paused in the act of pouring himself a mug of coffee. "When's it
supposed to hit?"
She shrugged. "They don't really know." The Columbus Day Storm was the stuff of legend. It had been a Pacific hurricane that made landfall on Columbus Day, 1962, causing a physical and economic disaster stretching from Northern California to British Columbia. The coast was used to and prepared for heavy wind and nearly a hundred inches of rain a year, so a storm as destructive as this one was memorable. It
was also the last time the lower Skookum River had flooded.
"Has the Weather Service issued a bulletin yet?"
Stephanie shook her head.
"We'll have to keep an eye on it." Dan finished filling his cup with Stephanie's coffee and turned toward his office. "Anything else I should know about?"
"I don't think so," Stephanie told him. "Jason didn't leave
any notes lying about. It looked like a routine night."
"Has he asked you out yet?"
"Jason?" The young woman blushed, but shook her head.
"He's seeing someone."
"Not anymore. I'll have to put a bug in his ear."
"Don't you dare!" Dan smiled into his coffee and stepped into his office. He could not help but feel a wistful attraction for the blond woman with the bright red face. She was intelligent and lovely and had a modesty he'd thought extinct in the age of "in your face." But Stephanie was ten years younger and he was the Chief of Police, her boss. Even if she did feel the same way about him, their relative
positions raised all sorts of ethical issues.
The phone rang.
Stephanie answered immediately. He eased down into his desk chair and set the mug of coffee on the desk's gray metal surface. Some would think his office small--it certainly was by big city standards--but it suited him. It was large enough for his desk, a computer terminal and phone, an old-fashioned steel filing cabinet and two chairs. The walls held a map and aerial photo of the city as well as several photos of him and his wife. A small window looked out over the asphalt of Eighth Street and the State office building across
the way. He walked over to his favorite photograph and looked at it for the ten millionth time. It showed Jennifer in waders and a down vest struggling to hold up a salmon nearly as big as she. Her smile was so wide it threatened to break her face.
After two years, he still missed her nearly every day.
"Chief?"
He turned to Stephanie, standing in the doorway.
"That was Evelyn Larsson on the phone . . . "
"Victor Larsson's widow?"
She nodded. "She says something happened to her dog. Actually,
she said someone stole her dog."
He sighed, and took one last sip of his coffee before heading out the door. The Larsson house was a neat little ranch style set amid a carefully sculpted garden of shrubbery, lawn, and perennials, dormant now, but lushly green with the winter rains. In the summer, it was spectacular as hell. Particularly when compared to the raw
forest directly across the street. Dan parked in the driveway and called in to let Stephanie and the Sheriff's dispatcher know he would be out of the car. He heard a door bang and looked over as Evelyn Larsson marched down the sidewalk toward him. She was a spry, seventy years old and even when bundled up in a heavy jacket and knit cap, couldn't have weighed a hundred pounds. She definitely
was no taller than his chest. "They took my Simon! Kidnapped him right out of the back yard!" She seemed to think it dereliction of duty that an officer hadn't been
posted to guard the canine. Dan calmed her down as much as he could and got her to give him some details. It seemed her dog had disappeared sometime during
the night while she slept. She had not seen anyone take Simon, nor had she
heard anything.
"Let's go take a look," he said. He followed the elderly woman around the house to the back yard. Her only concession to the infirmities of old age was a cane she used to steady
her footing on the wet grass. The back yard was small and less meticulously groomed than the front. In several places, the lawn had been dug up and a rough circle worn through where the dog had run, exposing the pale orange soil. Piles of feces slowly dissolved in the weather. A stainless steel chain made a bright silver line through the grass from the southeast corner of the lot, where it was stapled to a dog house.
It simply ended in the middle of the worn circle. There was no dog.
"Has Simon slipped his chain before?"
Mrs. Larsson shook her head. "Never. And that's a new
chain."
He nodded. "Please wait here." Dan walked over to the chain, stepping carefully to avoid trampling any evidence. He didn't see anything significant--there weren't even any visible tracks--but that didn't necessarily mean anything. The chain itself was heavy and did seem brand new. There was no rust or tarnish on any of the surfaces and in this climate it didn't take rust long to get started.
As if agreeing with him, a couple of fat drops landed on his hat.
"How was the chain attached to Simon's collar?"
"With one of those springy things--what are they called?--you know, like
you use to put a leader on a fishing line?" Dan nodded and squatted down to pick up the end of the chain. The final link was twisted and stretched. He let it drop again.
The chain had not been cut. It had been broken. Who would--who could?--break a brand-new steel chain in order to steal a dog, when detaching it from the dog's collar would be so much easier? How could they do it without waking the neighbors or the dog's owner? How could they do all this
without leaving any sign of their exertions on the muddy, rain-soaked ground?
"Are you going to put out an A.P.B. on my Simon?"
Dan returned to the old woman, suppressing the urge to smile. "Actually, All Points Bulletins are pretty much reserved for humans, he told her as they walked back around to the front of the house. "But I promise you all my officers will be keeping a sharp eye out for him. This is a small town. Either we'll spot him, or
he'll find his own way home."
Mrs. Larsson looked skeptical, but thanked him and returned to the warmth of her
house. Dan walked back to his car through a stiffening rain, removed the baton from his equipment belt and slid behind the wheel. Ninety percent of his job consisted of relatively meaningless calls like missing dogs, lockouts, or prowlers that didn't exist. It
was part of the job and he kind of enjoyed it. However, something told him this wasn't an ordinary missing dog case. There were too many unanswered questions, too many oddities that simply didn't fit where they should. Most of all, he couldn't even hazard a guess why someone would want to steal Evelyn
Larsson's dog. Or what he was going to do about it.
He jotted a couple of ideas in his notebook and backed out of the driveway. The rain Dan had predicted with the morning's wind had, instead, turned out to be just a drizzle, one of those spitting rains that made you think some mischievous god was spraying the world with an atomizer. It barely made using windshield wipers worthwhile,
but would soak you in a minute and a half. Dan found an empty space in the parking lot of Gino's, turned the collar of his coat up and strode across to the restaurant's door. Inside, the air was warm and dry and colored with the scents of marinara, pesto, and frying hamburgers. Subdued conversation, not unlike the rumble of distant surf, ebbed and flowed over the dining room. It was lunch time, and even during the off-season, Gino's
was almost full. Dan waved at Marcia behind the register and found Sam Bartlett in a booth in the nonsmoking section. He nodded to Tim O'Hara, the school superintendent, who was sitting with John Hunter, the high school principal on the other side of the room, then
slid into the booth across from the Sheriff. Sam looked up from his salad and nodded a greeting. The server appeared and Dan ordered coffee and a meatball sandwich.
"Meatball sandwich again?" Sam said.
Dan shrugged and sipped his coffee. "I like their marinara sauce.
What can I say?"
"Pretty soon, Gino's going to start your sandwich when he sees your car
pull into the parking lot.
"Then I'll either change my order, or save a hell of a lot of time on
lunch."
Sam laughed. Though more than ten years older and with as much gray as black in his crew cut, Sam had been Dan's mentor and one of his best friends for years. It had been Sam--himself Chief at the time--who had suggested Dan leave the Air Force to start a career in civilian law enforcement. Dan had been in town for his father's funeral. He was newly married and thinking of starting a
family and suddenly the migratory nature of military life didn't seem as
appealing as it once had. Several years later, it had been Sam who'd recommended Dan as the new Chief when he'd left to become the County Sheriff. "So what's new and exciting in the crime-ridden metropolis of Placerton?" Sam asked. "I heard you had a hot dog-napping this
morning."
"Actually, that was kind of a weird one."
Dan nodded and bit into his sandwich, trying not to say the next thought that
came to mind. It was just too weird. Sam said it for him. "It was more the style of a pack of dogs. Or maybe it was some psycho with an ax or machete. We'll probably never
know." Dan nodded and silently wondered whether there might be some kind of connection between the slaughter of the sheep and Mrs. Larsson's
dog. If there was, it was neither obvious nor in the normal range of
motives.
"Haven't there been a few livestock killings around the country over the
past few years?"
Sam shrugged. "I hadn't heard anything about it."
"I was just wondering if any of them had been successfully solved." The Sheriff shrugged again. "I could put something over the wire and see what pops up. But I'm not that worried about it. If its an
isolated killing . . ." He peered at Dan. "You think this and
your dog are connected?" Dan shook his head. "There's no reason to connect them. Other than the fact that they were both attacks on domestic animals, in a way. I
was just curious." O'Hara and Bartlett, the high school brain trust stopped to say hello on their way out the door. O'Hara was tall with a thin beard and short hair so curly it had to have been permed. Hunter was big and square, with huge hands that looked like they'd have been more comfortable laying brick than running a school. Both wore dress slacks and ivy-league sweaters over their shirts.
"Solving the County's crime problem's over lunch?" O'Hara asked.
Dan shook his head. "We were just rolling dice to set the quotas for
the month. What are you two up to?"
"Just eating," Turner said. "Were you planning on coming to
the basketball game this Thursday?"
Dan nodded. "You expecting some trouble?" Thursday, the high school team played their rivals from Brookings. Though neither team had much of a chance at the League Championship, the rivalry still burned as fiercely. In the past there had been a few fights, some vandalism, and other mischief when the
teams played.
"I don't know. There's been some rumors," Hunter said.
"I'd rather be safe than sorry."
"So would I," Dan nodded. "I will be there."
Hunter smiled.
They shook hands and the school officials moved toward the door. When they had gone Sam looked at Dan, just a trace of a smile playing over his lips. "Is it true that they belong to some kind of
wife-swapping, swingers club?" Dan shrugged. He had heard the same rumors, sourceless, and pervasive as all such rumors were. Especially in a small town. They
couldn't be believed, but they usually began with a kernel of truth.
"I have no idea," he said. He didn't tell his friend that Celeste Hunter, the principal's wife, had made several unsuccessful and not too subtle passes at him over the years.
Sam nodded, smiled to himself, then shook his head.
The server appeared to clear away their plates and refresh their coffees.
"Do you have any plans this weekend?" Sam asked. Dan shook his head. He would work Saturday and try to relax on Sunday. Maybe read, or rent some movies, or something. "Me and the missus were going to take the boat out and do some bottom fishing, providing the weather will let us over the bar. Would you
like to come with us?"
"Sounds like fun. When were you planning to go?"
They agreed on a tentative time early Sunday morning, paid their check and went
back to work.
Dan returned to the station shortly before 5:00. In the remaining two hours before Jason came in for the night shift, he planned to write the final reports from his shift, instruct Jason to keep a particular eye out for any stray dogs or dog-nappers, and catch up on the paperwork that went with heading the department. Forms had to be sent to the County, the State, and the Federal Government. They never seemed to end.
He still had no idea what had happened to Mrs. Larsson's dog.
Stephanie looked up as he walked through the door and burst into a smile.
"Hi. I was just writing you a note."
"That just about makes my day." He returned her smile.
Stephanie blushed and dropped her eyes.
"What's up?" he hurried on, immediately feeling like a jerk for
embarrassing her. "Mrs. Larsson has called at least three times to see if you'd found her dog. I told her you would let her know as soon as found anything, but she
insists you call her."
Dan sighed. "I don't suppose I could forget, do you?"
"You could," Stephanie smiled. "But you're in the book.
She'd just call you at home."
He nodded. "Anything else?" "Yeah. Sheriff Bartlett called. He said to tell you that he checked on some of those other killings you talked about at lunch and that none of
them had been solved."
She looked up at him, obviously puzzled. "Killings? Have there
been killings?"
He smiled and turned toward the coffee pot. "Sheep, Stephanie.
They were sheep."
"Oh."
He filled his mug and turned to find Stephanie slipping into her coat. She noticed his gaze and hesitated. "It's 5:00. I was going to go home. Unless you have something else you need me to do . . ." He shook his head. Stephanie looked particular appealing right now, weary at the end of her day and looking forward to home. He wondered
what was waiting for her there. If some man was waiting for her.
She deserved to have a man waiting for her.
"Anything interesting planned for tonight?"
"Not really," she said. "Make myself something to eat,
read, or watch TV until bed time. You?"
"About the same," he said. "Just a bunch of boring people
around here." She smiled and shoved her hands into the pockets of her coat. For a handful of heartbeats, they stood like that, neither saying a word. Then,
Stephanie finally took a step toward the door.
"See you in the morning."
He nodded. "Yeah. Have a good night."
She waved and walked out the door.
Dan swallowed some coffee, refreshed his cup, and walked into his office.
|
|
Send mail to webmaster@jamesmboyle.com with
questions or comments about this web site.
|